You Can Have a Happy Family (Part Two) – Rev. George A. Kelly

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Catholic children, catholic family, Catholic father, Catholic mother, Catholic parenting, God's grace, happy home

From The Catholic Family Handbook, Rev. George A. Kelly, 1950’s

Part One is here.

Parents are partners with God. The success of your family depends upon your recognition of the fact that as a parent of a human life, you share one of the greatest of God’s gifts–the magnificent act of creation.

Your role is to procreate His children, and to educate them so that they may ultimately return to Him in heaven. Only with Him can you realize your life’s goals for yourself, your mate and your children; for, as we learn in childhood, the first purpose of our existence is to know, love and serve God in this life so that we may be happy with Him forever in the next one.

To achieve its purpose, the family must be a triangle consisting of God, parents and children. Our Lord taught us this when He raised marriage–the fountainhead of the family–to the dignity of a sacrament. And through the sacrament, He provides the graces for true spiritual success in your family life regardless of the trials and tribulations you may face.

As your partner in parenthood, God will help you. His grace will make your home His dwelling place and the means of your sanctification. It will make you capable of greater love than you ever thought possible and will enable you, as a parent, to achieve levels of self-sacrifice beyond your dreams. And what it will enable you to achieve will lead not only to your own salvation but also to the salvation of the souls He has entrusted to your care.

God’s partnership with husbands and wives is nowhere more evident than in what might be called the “innate genius” of parents. If you look about you, you doubtless can see many men and women who a short time ago seemed to be irresponsible and incompetent, poorly fitted for the many tasks which must be performed as parents. Yet today they are fathers and mothers and–thanks to God’s grace–they are doing a proper job in caring for their children.

Once you accept the great force of God’s grace, you will never underestimate your own genius as a parent. Many of our own fathers and mothers were, by worldly standards, ignorant of psychiatry or psychology. Yet, by and large, they succeeded in bringing to adulthood men and women who walk in the path of goodness. They succeeded for one reason only: they understood their children’s need for love, encouragement and direction, and they gave it.

Without child experts to guide them along each small step of the way, they instinctively provided what was best for their youngsters. Once you make yourself willing to accept the graces which God offers to you, you will do so too. You will achieve a natural competence as a parent that will produce more good in your children than any blueprint that a human authority can give you.

What is a true Christian family? We probably can best appreciate the characteristics of a genuine God-fearing family by picturing it in operation in a representative home.

As Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston has inspiringly described it: “The worthy Christian home finds a true Christian family abiding therein and growing in love and care for one another. This home is not constructed in prefabricated fashion in a few weeks or a few years–for it is not purely material. Indeed its true character is achieved not through plaster and paint and sanitary plumbing, but through love and sweat and tears. It is a framework trimmed with remembered moments of joy; cemented by hours of suffering.

It is a reflection of the personalities of those who dwell therein, an expression of their likes and dislikes. The true Christian home is an altar of sacrifice and a theater of comedies and drama; it is a place of work and a haven of rest.”

If yours is a true Christian home, it is like a little church, where the family daily joins together in beautiful devotions–the family rosary, family night prayers and the act of consecration to the Sacred Heart. Life is viewed as Christ would have us view it. There is great trust and confidence in His providence.

Love, tenderness and forgiveness you find there, but also a high standard of moral living, obedience and discipline. Parents and children, whether they be rich or poor, share generously with each other, go without things if necessary, and bear trials and sufferings in patience.

It is a little school, where your children learn to live and love as dignified human beings, to work for the good of others, and to serve their fellow man without thought of monetary gain.

It is a little recreation center, where the family relaxes in peace from outside woes and work. Playing together helps children and parents reconcile differences and adjust to each other’s needs, and builds up the affectionate ties that last a lifetime.

Most of us remember the starring roles we had at one time or another in our own homemade theater. It is the humorous incidents of the family that help develop pleasant and outgoing personalities–the good fun involving Mother and Dad and all the boys and girls which the uncrowded modern household misses.

You can best live up to this picture of true family life if you keep as your ideal the life led by the Holy Family at Nazareth. For there, as

Cardinal Cushing goes on to say: “…one beheld simplicity and purity of conduct, perfect agreement and unbroken harmony, mutual respect and love, not of the false and fleeting kind, but that which found both its life and its charm in devotedness of service.

At Nazareth, patient industry provided what was required for food and raiment; there was contentment with little–and a concentration on the diminution of the number of wants rather than on the multiplication of sources of wealth.

Better than all else, at Nazareth there was found that supreme peace of mind and gladness of soul which never fails to accompany the possession of a tranquil conscience. At Nazareth one could witness a continuous series of examples of goodness, of modesty, of humility, of hard-working endurance, of kindness to others, of diligence in the small duties of daily life.”

You can imitate this model of the Holy Family only if you set out to make every member of your family more concerned about God and the things of God than about the things of this world. You must live in the awareness that all that is done is done in the presence of God and that genuine happiness results only when we conform to His will.

“Love is the most wonderful educator in the world; it opens up worlds and possibilities undreamed of to those to whom it comes, the gift of God. I am speaking of love which is worthy of the name, not of its many counterfeits. The genuine article only, based upon respect and esteem, can stand the test of time, the wear and tear of life; the love which is the wine of life, more stimulating and more heart-inspiring when the days are dark than at any other time,—the love which rises to the occasion, and which many waters cannot quench.” – Annie S. Swan, Courtship and Marriage And the Gentle Art of Home-Making, 1893

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Author Mary Reed Newland here draws on her own experiences as the mother of seven to show how the classic Christian principles of sanctity can be translated into terms easily applied to children even to the very young.

Because it’s rooted in experience, not in theory, nothing that Mrs. Newland suggests is impossible or extraordinary. In fact, as you reflect on your experiences with your own children, you’ll quickly agree that hers is an excellent commonsense approach to raising good Catholic children.

Fr. Lawrence Lovasik, the renowned author of The Hidden Power of Kindness, gives faithful Catholics all the essential ingredients of a stable and loving Catholic marriage and family — ingredients that are in danger of being lost in our turbulent age.

Using Scripture and Church teachings in an easy-to-follow, step-by-step format, Fr. Lovasik helps you understand the proper role of the Catholic father and mother and the blessings of family. He shows you how you can secure happiness in marriage, develop the virtues necessary for a successful marriage, raise children in a truly Catholic way, and much more.

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Teach Your Child to Love Obedience

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Catholic parenting, obedience, rasing Catholic children

From How to Raise Good Catholic Children by Mary Reed Newland

Obedience is another problem that demands honesty from parents as well as from children. It’s practically impossible to explain obedience to a very small child. He has to learn it through restrictions and moderate punishments.

But along about four (and a wild age it is), he’s capable of considering obedience as a real, although intangible, virtue.

The ideal way of introducing him to the idea of obedience is the story of the Boy Christ in the Temple. It’s perfect because it was an occasion when Jesus was not doing something that was wrong, but something contrary to the wishes of Mary and Joseph.

Then, if we relate it to the Fourth Commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother,” we can show him how, even to Jesus, who was God, the commandment applied. His perfect obedience in returning to Nazareth to be “subject to them”  is something to ponder, and we can tell the story in terms of their own lives — deciding what chores He probably helped with, what His town was like, His routine (like ours) of work, meals, prayer, play, and rest.

And when we read St. Luke’s words, “And Jesus advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace, with God and men,” we can help them to see that obedience is not just rules to obey, but the way to wisdom and grace.

Like everything else, however, it has to be repeated and repeated.

One of the big troubles is that we’re always demanding obedience now and not then. Our own inconsistency is often more confusing and blameworthy than children’s willfulness, and if we are entirely honest, we have to admit that many times we abuse obedience by demanding it in things where it is not entirely reasonable.

It’s good to remember why we want them to be obedient. We’re used to thinking of it in terms of living in a society where there are laws to be respected, with obedience at home as training for obedience in the world.

But we don’t really want to teach them these things just so that they will stay out of jail! We want them to love obedience, because in obedience to duly constituted authority, they’re obeying God, from whom comes all authority.

And obedience in all things is the way to peace. It’s one of the least understood of all the virtues (especially in adult life), one of the least loved, and I think it’s the most beautiful — because it covers everything, and perfect obedience can grow only out of love.

When our children are in a nice, quiet mood and we’re talking about things in general and get around to saints, one of the things they love most to hear is how St. Thérèse loved obedience so perfectly that if she were writing when the bell rang, she would put her pen down and go, not even stopping to dot an i.

And for a while — say, a few hours — we have utterly lovely obedience in our house because everyone is imitating Thérèse.

Obedience is not usually so lovely, however. It’s dull, no fun, and very, very hard. This is as it should be. We aren’t going to grow strong by doing things that are easy.

So we can remind children that even Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, wept and sweat blood at the thought of the obedience asked of Him. And He asked His Father to take away the hard thing He was supposed to do. But then He said, “Not my will, but Thine,” because more than all other things, He loved doing the will of His Father.

Later, when the story of His Passion and death was written in the Gospels, it was written: “He was obedient unto the end.”

So if there has been disobedience, there must be a punishment, and like the Lord High Executioner, we must try to make the punishment fit the crime.

Depriving children of privileges is about the best way, because it gives them time to reflect about what they might have been doing if they hadn’t been disobedient. And when it’s time to punish, there must be the understanding that the punishment is retribution made to God as well as to parents.

It helps to have it explained. “You see, dear, mothers and fathers have to be obedient to God’s will, too. It would be easier, sometimes, to let you do what you want. Much more pleasant for you and less trouble for us. But God has given you to us for a while on earth, and because He wants you to be a saint, we must try to teach you all the things that will help you be a saint. Obedience is one of them.

When you’re big, you’ll have people you’ll have to teach — maybe children, maybe other grown-ups. How will you teach them obedience if you don’t know what it is yourself? How will we ever be saints if we are disobedient?

“Every time you obey, it makes it that much easier to obey the next time, because your soul is forming the habit and you’re using the graces God sends to help you with obedience. You can learn to love obedience if only you will work at it and pray about it.

Remember the obedience of our Lord when He was only twelve, quite near your own age. Pray to Him, and ask Him to help you. He can teach you to love obedience.”

Our John is much given to lamenting in the middle of a punishment, “Now things aren’t nice anymore. Everything’s spoiled.”

Precisely. It started with Original Sin, and everything but everything, was spoiled, beginning with man’s sanctifying grace all the way through the order in nature.

Disobedience has only one function: to spoil everything. There is a difference between disobedience and “not paying attention,” and it’s very easy to fall into this trap and hand out punishment when it really isn’t due.

Disobedience is a form of rebellion. Not paying attention is a very human weakness (which, I grant you, needs correction, but doesn’t belong in this class).

There is a story told of Susanna Wesley that helps us remember this. She had asked one of her many children again and again to do something, and the child, absorbed in something else, failed to do it. When she asked again, her husband said to her, “Susanna, I have heard you ask that child to do that nineteen times already. How is it you have the patience to ask him the twentieth?”

And she replied, “But at last he has done it; so you see, if I had not asked the nineteen times, he would not have done it the twentieth.”

It takes that discernment to tell the difference between disobedience and inattention, and that kind of patience. No wonder Susanna Wesley was famous for being a good mother.

Then there are temper tantrums. Not all children have them, although all lose their tempers from time to time.

What we’re concerned with here is children given to consistent displays of temper (a subject on which I’m an authority). Many times a temper tantrum is just another way of trying to obtain attention, and for the very young, the best method is to ignore them. Usually leaving them alone to carry on without an audience is more effective than trying to reason.

But if it continues (and there are children who come dangerously close to harming themselves in a fit of temper, banging their heads on the floor, and so forth), a firm hand is called for.

“If you want your husband to trust you with his heart as he once did, it’s important to practice self-control, hold your tongue, and replace criticism with kindness. Listen when he talks and make an effort to show him respect.” -Darlene Schacht
“The truth is, the less you communicate your complaints, negative thoughts, and criticisms to your husband, the better your intimacy will be, and the stronger your marriage.” – Laura Doyle

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